Backup servers including a plurality of data storage drives frequently encounter data communications errors when trying to access a drive. When a data communications error occurs, the drive access is retried multiple times, consuming time and adding time delays to client applications, resulting in system-wide down time. Despite the amount of time required for error retries, the error translation is not able to determine the cause of the error (e.g., whether the error is caused by a faulty drive or a faulty connection to the drive) quickly.